After loads and loads of speculation and rumours over the past couple of weeks, Microsoft has just publically released the BETA version of the Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista.

 

The initial BETA releases supports five different languages - English, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish. It will not work on operating systems with other languages, don't bother trying. You can download x64 SP2 here (615MB) and x86 SP2 here (389MB).

 

Below is a list of the main new features in SP2, keep in mind though that it also includes a whole stack of bug fixes and patches, which you can see here.

 

• Support for Bluetooth 2.1
• Improved Blu-ray support
• exFAT file system for USB sticks
• Support for Via 64 Bit processors
• Solution for WLAN problems after S3
• Windows Search 4.0
• Faster RSS gadget
• Less crashes
• Increased compatibility

 

Proceed with caution and as always, backup all important data before installing SP2 BETA.